Services: Moving the electric cable

Unfortunately the overhead electricity cable supplying the existing house was right over the foundations for the new house and had to be moved before the timber frame arrived (see cable in top right of pic). 





Renowned for high costs, long waiting lists and piles of administrative red-tape, the electricity company had the potential to bring the whole build to a standstill. Luckily we first contacted them back in June and after much filling-in of forms and follow-up phone calls, we finally managed to get them booked in for the end of November.
 
In preparation, we needed to dig a trench for the new underground electricity supply and in order to spare our poor cherry trees from another battering by the digger, we decided it was safer to bypass them completely by running the trench around the outside of our bank and then digging a hole straight through it to reach the new meter.     












Mark the electrician got the meter boxes prepared ready for Western Power's arrival. We were hoping they'd let us keep the old overhead line to use for the existing house which would save us having to buy an expensive new cable.





Hoorah! Not only did the electricity company arrive on time but they also kindly let us keep the old cable. The chap who took down the overhead line was particularly interested in our build as he'd come very close to buying our house about 20 years ago.     









An hour or so later and our house supply was back up and running. We added some outdoor power sockets to the temporary supply box for site use and will move the meter box across to the new house once we have some walls up.







Putting the bank back together exposed some nice old stones that had been buried under all the long grass. We think there may be more hidden along the whole length of the plot which we'd like to eventually uncover.

Services: Water borehole

It made sense to have the borehole drilled before starting work on building the house, not least because a lot of trades would need copious amounts of water. To comply with health regulations, the borehole needed to be sited over 50 metres away from our septic tank. This was a bit of a squeeze on our site and unfortunately one of our nicest flowerbeds bit the dust.

The drilling rig arrived on a trailer accompanied by a giant compressor to power it. The business end of the drill was a tungsten carbide drill bit, not much bigger than a football but so heavy that one person could hardly lift it.

The drilling rig was set up in the corner of the garden (goodbye flowers) and drilling commenced. The plan was to drill to a depth of around 40 metres which would hopefully hit a decent supply of water. No drilling company offers any guarantee though; the nearest farm to us had to drill 80 metres deep and even then ended up with iron-heavy water that looked like a thick orange sludge.
We weren't sure what we were going to find and how much extra it was going to cost us if they had to drill beyond 40 metres.





Drilling the borehole...

Each drill shaft was a metre and a half in length and they were screwed together as the drill descended.





To protect the shallowest part of the borehole from contamination, a plastic pipe was installed for the first 6-7 metres and backfilled with concrete. Once the concrete had set, drilling restarted.







Luckily we struck water within a few hours. The drillers tested the flow rate and it looked very promising. For most domestic properties they look for a flow rate of 1 gallon per minute - ours was already flowing at 10 gallons per minute and was also looking remarkably clear.

Having hit such a large vein of water at 31.5 metres the drillers thought it pointless to drill any deeper just for the sake of it. There was also the risk of hitting a seam of iron or manganese which is very common in our area.

A lot of crushed slate was produced from the borehole leaving us with lots of clearing up to do.


 


Once drilling was completed the borehole was lined with perforated pipes.

A concrete cover was cemented into the ground to protect the borehole and to house some of the pump equipment...It almost looked like a gravestone in rememberance of the desolation to our poor flowerbed.





Though it's good that we found so much water, there's a lot more to do before we can just turn on the tap for a nice drink. Next we'll be installing the pump and getting the water tested to find out what type of filtration we need.